


On a Limb

by eloquated



Category: Good Omens (TV), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Fluff, M/M, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-03
Updated: 2019-06-03
Packaged: 2020-04-07 09:51:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19082596
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eloquated/pseuds/eloquated
Summary: Angels should not have children.But that doesn't mean it's impossible.(Or, Molly Hooper takes after her dad).





	On a Limb

**Author's Note:**

> This is one of those random little ideas that popped into my overtired brain, and decided it was going to stay there (making any other writing impossible!) until I wrote it!
> 
> Enjoy the crack, and the utter cavity causing fluff!

**1.**

Angels should not have children.

It wasn’t that they couldn’t-- although many people firmly believed it was impossible, and the actual biology of it was a bit of an unintentional design flaw.  And it certainly wasn’t that children of such unexpected unions were destined (or doomed, however you looked at it) to have strange powers, or make great changes in the world.

In fact, most Nephilim children didn’t seem particularly odd at all!  A little smarter than the average human, a little healthier-- they weren’t entirely immune to the common cold, for example, but they always seemed to bounce back just a little faster than they should.  

Of course, some of them did great things. Mythology is full of people doing heroic, almost Godly things-- but as almost none of them were ever claimed by an angelic, or indeed, demonic, parent?  Well, the argument of “Do Nephilim lead more epic lives?” was mostly academic.

Provided they lived that long.  And that, of course, was the complicated part.

Popular wisdom assumes that the vulnerable children of the “Sons of God, and Daughters of Men”, would be easy pickings for the other side.  More specifically, that demons would be only too happy to pick off the babies like bon-bons, before they could do any good in the world.

Or that the Angels, proper Angels, would be doing the world a favour by sparing it any more evil.  After all, the child of a demon must, by nature, be a particularly nasty sort. Possibly a serial killer, or a door-to-door salesman.  

The truth was both more complicated, and infinitely more simple.

For the most part, by virtue of being half human, Nephilim children (and nobody was quite sure where the name had come from, but it had stuck sometime before the Deluge) had free will.  They were raised with other children, playing their games and doing their crafts. They could become homemakers, and Evangelists, and writers, or whatever else stirred their interest.

The real danger (and this is a closely guarded secret, so you might wish to keep it to yourself) had always come from their parent’s own side.  

Of course, both angels and demons had all manner of justification for the routine slaughter of Nephilim babies.  They were a complication, they shouldn’t exist, they were tasty when spread on toast with a little strawberry jam.  

They were a risk. 

They were too much of a distraction.  After all, their parents were supposed to be working for the greater good (or bad) not changing nappies and attending school plays.

Aziraphale had never given much thought to it, if he was being entirely honest.  He’d met Nephilim children, a few of them, and they’d all be quite well behaved girls and boys.  They always had a feel to them, something a little bit  _ odd _ , if you knew what you were sensing.  But nice, quite nice!

He’d never particularly wanted children of his own; he was an Angel, and even if he wasn’t an especially good one, he was still making an effort.  But Laura had been so very sweet, hanging around his book shop until she’d become almost a fixture, her soft, dark head bent over the book of the afternoon.

And really!  It was mostly Crowley’s fault, anyway!  Talking up the glories of sin, and putting all that curiousity into his head!  It hadn’t even been that enjoyable; mostly, looking back on that evening, it had been strange, a little uncomfortable, and damp.

The sort of thing you put out of your mind, because not every experiment is successful, and even angels had to assuage their curiousity sometimes.

Nine months later, Laura appeared at his shop, just as he was dusting his copies of Othello and King Lear.  The bell over the door had chimed merrily, and by the time it had stopped, Aziraphale’s gaze had fallen on the tiny swaddling blanket tucked into her arms.

Angels were not immune to the sinking feeling of dread.

“There must be some confusion, this simply isn't-- while I’m flattered that--”  Was flattered the right word? Aziraphale doubted it, but his rambling had already continued to roll on.  

In response, Laura had tucked the baby into the crook of his arm, and Aziraphale’s mouth snapped shut with an audible click.  His arms froze and locked in place, gripped with the strange terror that he was going to accidentally drop her.

His, or not!  He didn’t want to do that!

“She’s Margaret, after my Mum.  But we call her Molly.” Laura had explained, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, and back again.  “I should have told you before, but…” She trailed off, the aborted sentence dancing in the air for a moment.

Aziraphale could scarcely hear her over the rushing in his ears.  In six thousand years, he’d never held someone so small. And when Molly squinted up at him, she had his eyes.

 

**2.**

“This is a disaster!  A completely unmitigated disaster!  Oh Crowley, what am I supposed to do?!”  Aziraphale bemoaned a few days later, his gaze occasionally drifting over to the wrapped bundle of contentedly sleeping baby in her lamb printed bassinette. 

“Oh, she looks terrifying, alright.  I don’t know what you want me to do about it, though.  She’s your sprog, not much to do with me.” Unlike the angel, who was giving the baby a very wide berth, Crowley was perched on the arm of the couch, watching the tiny little girl with open intrigue in his slit pupiled eyes.

“I don’t know!  I really don’t know… Oh this is a disaster, a complete disaster!  I don’t know the first thing about taking care of a baby, and Laura’s still in university--”

“Adoption?  Left on a fairy hill?”  Crowley suggested unhelpfully, and took just a little amusement from the way his friend’s complexion turned from anxiously pale, to a ruddy flush.

“I don’t think that’s very funny!”

In her basket, Molly stirred and opened one unimpressed eye.  It was impossible to tell if she found it as amusing as Crowley.

“We have to keep her safe!”

With a jolt, Crowley looked up at his friend, eyebrows arched over the top of his sunglasses, “ _ We _ , angel?  I don’t think I signed on for--”

  
“Yes, we.  Quite. This is at least one third your fault, and you’re going to help me!”  Aziraphale crossed his arms over his waistcoated chest, and tried to look as fierce and firm as he could.  The effect was more comical than intimidating, but it always did something strange in Crowley’s chest that made him (inconveniently, he thought) agree.

He always agreed when the blasted angel looked at him like that.

“I think your maths’ bollocks, but I’ll help you anyway.”

No, Crowley amended with an inward sigh-- it wasn’t the crossed arms, or the look of perturbation.  It was the smile that always came after. That was the thing he couldn’t say ‘no’ to.

 

**3.**

“Uncle Crowley!”

The demon in question had just ducked through the book shop door, and out of the pouring rain that had been trying to emulate the Deluge over London for a week.  He was cross, and damp, and still deciding if he’d come to antagonize Aziraphale, or to drag him out to the Savoy for a late lunch.

He hadn’t banked on the precocious three-year-old that had vaulted off the end of a well-worn couch by the window, and run headlong into his legs.

Crowley was fairly sure that she’d grown another foot and a half since he’d seen her the month before.  “Molly!” He exclaimed, and peeked around the shop (after all, appearances had to be maintained!) before scooping her up against his chest in a tight, one armed hug.  “What are you doing? And where’s your daddy?”

Molly jabbed a finger in the direction of her picture book, opened to a page covered end to end in a bright, childish depiction of Noah and his arc.  There were cartoonish animals all walking in twos towards the improbably sized boat, and everyone was smiling.

“Revisionist history.”  Crowley muttered under his breath and snorted, “Come on, kid.  Let’s go find your daddy, so we can get some lunch. It’s pouring out, you can jump in some puddles.”

Entirely because it would annoy the prim and fussy Aziraphale… And not because Molly beamed up at him with that million megawatt smile that she’d inherited entirely from her father.  

And certainly not because Crowley was completely helpless in the face of that unfettered joy.

“Then we’ll tell you how that arc business actually happened.  And a few others things, too.”

 

**4.**

The odds against Molly were spectacularly bad.  There were five boys, and each of them was probably twice her size.  And yet, when she’d seen the poor kitten they were hounding into the corner of the fence, she’d gathered up all of her courage (which never felt like quite enough, all things considered) and stomped across the manicured green of Hyde Park.

“Stop it!  You leave her alone, right now!”  

From her vantage point, with all a child’s singular determination, Molly didn’t see the way her daddy’s face twisted in worry, or the sharply pointed gaze that her uncle pinned to the bully boys.  She only knew that the five of them picked up their school bags and scarpered down the path in a hurry.

Well, that wasn’t how she’d expected that to go at all!

“Do you really think that was necessary, Crowley?”  Aziraphale asked under his breath, and tried to nonchalantly slow his steps.  Consciously he resisted the urge to ‘casually’ slide his hand into his pocket.  He never did that, and Crowley would be certain to call him on it, if he tried! “We could have…”

Actually, he wasn’t sure what else they could have done.  But scolding Crowley on his use of his powers was old habit, and it would have seemed stranger still not to say anything!

“Let her get beaten up by a handful of idiots?”  Crowley rejoined, and smirked.

And then none of it mattered, because Molly was running up to her father with the bedraggled kitten cradled in her arms like a baby. It was a pitiful thing, all damp and muddy, with its tiny body vibrating with a happy purr that seemed to big for such a small cat.  “Daddy! Can I? Please?”

“Yes, daddy… Can she?” Crowley drawled insouciantly, and ruffled Molly’s dark hair, just to disarray the plaits he’d braided in that morning (well, he was six thousand years old, he’d protested, he’s learned how to do a few things in that time!).

“Well… Really, Molly, I’m not certain that’s a good--”

“Please?  I’ll take such good, good care of her!  I promise!”

Aziraphale looked down at his daughter’s beaming, upturned face, and checked a sigh of defeat.  “I … Suppose so. It’s only a very small cat, after all.”

Which was how Kitty Poppins ended up living at the quaint bookstore on the corner.

 

**5.**

“This is entirely your influence, you realize.  She’s such a good girl, I don’t  _ understand _ why she’s doing this.” 

Crowley slouched down in his seat, one ankle crossed over the other, “Going to university?”  He asked in a supremely unhelpful manner.

“No!  All this… Pathology.  Working with the dead. It’s not right!”  Aziraphale tried to pitch his voice soft, barely above a whisper, but the woman in front of them still turned to fix them both with a sharp, disapproving look.

Aziraphale wilted a little, and continued to fidget with the already dog-eared corner of his programme.  “I just want her to be, well, happy. God knows- well, I hope she doesn’t, but really, that’s beside the point… I haven’t been the sort of father she…”

“If she doesn’t like it, she’ll declare a new major.”

Crowley was a demon, and he didn’t know quite how to tell Aziraphale that he had been an amazing father.  That Molly adored him, and had grown up-- despite all the overwhelming odds against them-- happy and healthy, and in one piece.  

That he had kept her safe from Gabriel, and the rest of the Heavenly Host; and from the denizens of the Pit, too.  

There were things that demons just weren’t very good at.  

So instead, Crowley shuffled his chair and reached for his angel’s hand.  

And Aziraphale started, surprised.  But he didn’t let go.

 

**6.**

Crowley was going to kill him.  Actually, literally, boil him alive in Hellfire until he turned into a bloody raisin.  He was going to pluck off his fingernails and do other horrible, nasty, things-- and he was going to do it all without Aziraphale finding out, because his angel would council tolerance, and patience.

But Aziraphale wasn’t here.  He was, in fact, unreachable for the moment-- somewhere up North, and bugger if he  _ still _ refused to use a cell phone!  

So it had been Crowley that had come to the rescue, and soothed their Molly, and tucked her into bed to get some rest.  And it was Crowley that was currently brooding in the middle of her living room, casting sidelong glances at her very slightly wilted house plants.

He didn’t dare to speak to them-- Molly had  _ views _ on the emotional welfare of plants.  

No, Sherlock Holmes was simply going to have to die.  There was no other way around it. Crowley wasn’t even sure which side was going to get his soul in the After; it could honestly go either way.  But more importantly, he wouldn’t be able to upset Molly anymore.

In fact!  If he could get someone else to do the killing for him, he could claim it as a work expense.  God- no- Satan- knew that more than a few people had tried to bump off the Consulting Detective in the past! 

When Aziraphale showed up an hour later, the two of them sat on the couch and plotted dire revenge over cocoa.

At least, until Crowley got it out of his system, and Sherlock was allowed to continue living.

 

**7.**

“He’s perfect…”  Aziraphale barely dared to breathe as he looked down at the tiny newborn, swaddled tightly in a blue blanket, fast asleep.  

“He’s going to look like his father.”  Came the dry reply, but even Crowley couldn’t quite resist the urge to smooth a fingertip over one of the baby’s dark curls.  

“There are worse things.”

Angels weren’t supposed to have children.  They certainly weren’t supposed to have grandchildren.

But those were rules for other people.  

And when it came to their family, Crowley and Aziraphale had decided to make their own.

  
  
  



End file.
